Elite Media Downplays Austrian Economics by Building Up MMT

Heterodox economics … Marginal revolutionaries … The crisis and the blogosphere have opened mainstream economics up to new attack … The market monetarists do not fret about the side effects of the activism they seek, which can misdirect capital, inflate bubbles and seduce people into over-borrowing … Meanwhile mainstream economists continue to look at all the options askance, though not equally so. Some, particularly on the left, are getting quite enthusiastic about the market monetarists’ NGDP targeting. Few are as keen on neo-chartalism. The late Bill Vickrey, a Nobel prize-winner, had sympathy for its take on debt, but it remains largely confined to academic redoubts in Kansas City, Missouri and Newcastle, New South Wales. As for the Austrians, Brad DeLong, a Keynesian Berkeley professor who also blogs, has called an acquaintance with their ideas a useful part of a diversified intellectual portfolio. But his frequent comrade in arms, Mr Krugman, does not seem to have revised his view that their business-cycle theory is “as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire”. – The Economist

Dominant Social Theme: The Internet and blogosphere have given rise to numerous new financial-economic theories. Oh, Austrian economics is one of them. But it’s only one of many. Not more important, man. Just another one. So many of them. At least one other.

Free-Market Analysis: Another day, another attempt by the mainstream media to marginalize Austrian economics. We’re using the Economist article (excerpted above) as an example but in our view this is a powerful elite dominant social theme.

How does the article marginalize Austrian economics? By taking an oblique approach, reporting not on the phenomenal rise of free-market economics but on the blogosphere’s enabling role. This is a little like reporting on the latest American Idol by describing the role the Internet played in his or her advancement. It’s part of the story but not the main story.

So why does the Economist use this approach? Because the Economist is a prime Anglosphere power elitemouthpiece. The Anglosphere elites are trying to set up world government and the last thing they want or need is a popular economic philosophy showing that a New World Order is neither feasible nor practical.

The Economist and other mainstream media have marginalized Austrian economics for nearly a decade now, ever since the economic philosophy began to make a comeback thanks to the Internet. It has virtually overtaken Keynesian economics on the ‘Net as the most popular and relevant economic theory. But mainstream articles about Austrian economics are rare and usually diffident.

The Anglosphere power elite REALLY dislikes Austrian economics for three reasons. First, it advocates human action and in doing so shows that the foundation of mainstream economics – econometrics – is merely a variant of the USSR five-year plan.

Modern mathematical projections can never be used to pass laws because the laws and regulations themselves change human behavior. This is why laws and regulations almost always seem to work exactly in the opposite way from which they are intended.

Second, Austrian economics shows us that the monetary basis of the world’s modern economy – central banking – is a theoretical falsehood and ruinous reality. You can’t fix the price of money anymore than you can pass laws and regulations to force changes in basic human behavior.

Modern central banking creates tremendous booms and busts. During the bust phase, those who control central banks further consolidate their control of modern economies and businesses. This analysis of modern monetary practices was developed by famous Austrians Ludwig von Mises and FA Hayek.

The final point inherent in Austrian economics is that money often does best when it is has some relationship to commodities, preferably gold. This is, however, the least clear part of Austrian theory and the most in flux.

Modern Austrians are often apt to agree with the idea that ANY money is viable so long as it is accepted in the marketplace and divorced from government/monopoly control. Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul falls within this latter category, arguing in his current presidential campaign that there ought to be monetary competition within the marketplace.

This article is a variant of the “ignore Austrian economics” meme. The article doesn’t actually ignore Austrian economics but by lumping it in with two other economics “theories” it marginalizes the growth of Austrian – free-market – economics and, more importantly, minimizes its success.

Implicit in the article’s composition is the idea that the INTERNET has driven interest in Austrian economics, and is driving interest generally in hitherto non-mainstream economic theories.

Of course, here at the Daily Bell we often talk about what we call the Internet Reformation. But we are carefully to make a distinction between the Internet Reformation and the Internet REVOLUTION. This is an article partially about the Internet Revolution.

We see the Internet as a fundamentally subversive technology that is undermining the manifestations of global governance that the elites are working hard to implement. The Internet “Revolution” is technology “changing our lives” – as a mainstream commercial might put it.

The Internet Revolution might change our lives by making it easier to choose pet food for our favorite animals or compare prices for a long-sought-after getaway in the sun.

The Internet Reformation changes our lives by introducing us to information about the strategies that the elites are using to consolidate their New World Order – from phony wars to authoritarian legislation to ruinous economic policy that seems intentionally aimed at causing a depression.

The Economist article fits right into the elite’s larger effort to marginalize Austrian economics by making it merely part of the larger Internet “phenomenon.” Austrian economics, we see, would not have achieved popularity without modern technology, and neither would these “other” economic disciplines.

This is a deeply disingenuous analysis, in our view. One of the hallmarks of the Internet was how quickly it developed into a kind of echo chamber for views on freedom and free markets. It turned out there was a whole history of deep intellectual thought concerning human action and the markets that had been missing from the mainstream for 100 years or more.

Once the elites lost control of the conversation on the Internet they never got it back. But they’ve been chipping away by creating false flags – including individuals and whole theoretical schools that are tailored to cause confusion about free-markets and freedom generally.

The idea is to provide intellectual firepower for anti-freedom and pro-government activities. This is most important to the continued success of the current elite conspiracy, as those in charge seem well aware that they need to animate their various power grabs with various moral arguments.

This is, in fact, the reason dominant social themes are so important to the elites. They are coercive devices that do the work that brute force cannot. The Internet has been undermining these themes with regularity, however. This is one reason that the elites have turned to war and authoritarian legislation.

But chaos and brutality is not a good substitution for coercion, by which people willingly submit to increased world governance under the impression they will ensure their solvency and safety. This is the reason that the elites continue to promote dominant social themes even though the Internet has increasingly made them less effective.

The toolbox simply is not that big or deep, from what we can tell. This article is a good case in point. Let’s take a quick look at the two “theories” that are trotted out in opposition to Austrian theory.

Chartalism’s theoretical constructs are known as Modern Monetary Theory. Here’s Wikipedia: “Because the government can issue its own currency at will, MMT maintains that the level of taxation relative to government spending (the government’s deficit spending or budget surplus) is in reality a policy tool that regulates inflation and unemployment, and not a means of funding the government’s activities per se.”

Market Monetarism, the other “theory,” has to do with the idea that central banks should target the “nominal employment” rather than price inflation or other indices. The idea is that the central bank should print enough money to ensure that people have jobs.

Of course, this is economically illiterate stuff. The reason the West is suffering from so much unemployment is BECAUSE the economy has been stimulated and re-stimulated by monopoly money printing for about a century now – and certainly for the past 30 years with increasing energy and power.

By now Western economies – and actually the world’s – have been so distorted by this extra money printing (literally tens of trillions of late) that people simply don’t know whom to lend to. It’s not clear which companies are solvent and why.

Weapons companies, green companies, environmental energy companies, lobbying and law firms, educational and public unions – the list of companies being supported either by central bank money printing or by governments themselves is overwhelming.

This is the reason that the Western model of “capitalism” is dying. It has nothing to do with free markets themselves and everything to do with a monetary system that prints endless trillions to prop up the crony capitalist enterprises of the elites themselves.

You won’t learn any of this in the Economist article – or in other similar articles. The problems of Western economies are simple enough. They have to do with the almost psychopathic amounts of control that the Anglosphere elites now exercise – via mercantilism – on governments and economies around the world.

Between wars, laws, taxes and monopoly and fiat money printing there is almost no aspect of modern society that the elites have not distorted virtually into bankruptcy.

This is the reason that Austrian, free-market economics has grown so popular so quickly. It actually explains what is going on and what is necessary to change it.

Such knowledge drives the powers-that-be wild. Thus, articles like this one in the Economist that explain, basically, that Austrian theory is merely one “opinion” among many and that those economists who advocate yet MORE central bank money printing and MORE monopoly control of money have valid points, too.